ABA Launches Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project

The American Bar Association recently announced the creation of the Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. The Project will work toward achieving a national moratorium on executions until the death penalty process is reformed. (ABA Press Release , 4/3/02

American Bar Association

Press Release

News Release:Immediate

April 3, 2002 

Contact:   Nancy Cowger Slonim

Phone: 312/988-6132

E-mail: [email protected]

Online:  http://www.abanet.org/media 

ABA PROJECT PRESSES FOR NATIONWIDE DEATH PENALTY REFORMS

WASHINGTON, D.C.,  - With the launch of the Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, the American Bar Association is stepping up its efforts to achieve a national moratorium on executions until the death penalty process is reformed.

    Although the association has no position on the death penalty itself, in 1997 it called for a halt in executions nationwide until capital jurisdictions can ensure that death penalty cases are administered fairly, in accordance with due process and with minimum risk that innocent people may be executed.

    In this new phase of the moratorium effort, a steering committee and dedicated staff will encourage other bar associations to press for moratoriums in their own jurisdictions and encourage state government leaders to adopt moratoriums while they undertake detailed examinations of their own capital punishment laws and procedures.  The ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, http://www.abanet.org/irr/home.html, which houses the project, published protocols last June to assist states undertaking these detailed

reviews.

   "What the ABA seeks through this project is justice, pure and simple," said ABA President Robert E. Hirshon. "Until we eliminate the flaws in administering capital punishment, we rob both the victims of crime and their loved ones of certainty in a just result, we rob the American people of a legal system in which they can trust, and we risk executing people who are innocent," he said.  "As Jack Curtin, one of my predecessors as ABA president, said, 'A system that will take life must first give justice.'  We have not yet assured that our system gives justice, and until we do, the machinery of death should be put on hold."

    Hirshon named James E. Coleman Jr., a professor at Duke University School of Law and a past chair of the ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, to chair the steering committee.

  "This concrete step advances the ABA's support for a rational approach to capital punishment in this country-one that insists on fairness," said Coleman.   "As a nation that believes in the rule of law, we must hold ourselves to exacting standards in applying the law.  That is especially true where a mistake could result in the execution of an innocent person.  A moratorium is essential while we assess the shortcomings in our current system and work to rectify them."

   Other steering committee members are Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights; W. J. Michael Cody, a Memphis lawyer and former attorney general of Tennessee; James G. Exum Jr., an appellate lawyer in Greensboro, N.C., and former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court; Ruth Friedman of Washington, D.C., who has represented defendants in capital cases and appeals for 14 years; Thomas L. Lorenzi, of Lake Charles, La., who was instrumental in having the Louisiana State Bar Association call for a death penalty moratorium in that state; and Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor and faculty director of clinical programs at Harvard Law School.  Deborah T. Fleischaker, a lawyer with death penalty litigation and public policy experience, is project director.  She is a member of the ABA section's staff in Washington, D.C.

   The project has established a Web site for lawyers, government leaders and the public as a one-stop resource on law and policy-related moratorium issues in capital jurisdictions at http://www.abanet.org/irr/deathpenalty.

   The ABA House of Delegates voted in 1997 to urge the moratorium on executions, pending implementation in each jurisdiction of capital punishment policies and procedures consistent with longstanding association policies on fairness, due process, impartiality and minimizing the risk of executing innocent persons. There are more than 525  members of the House, chosen by the members of state, territorial and local bar associations; minority and special practice bar associations; and ABA members who work in corporations, government, large and small law firms, courts and academia.

      The American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership association in the world.  With more than 400,000 members, the ABA provides law school accreditation, continuing legal education, information about the law, programs to assist lawyers and judges in their work, and initiatives to improve the legal system for the public.